Nisha Duggal

Nisha Duggal joined D6 throughout July 2009 as part of our research residency programme.

Nisha spent her residency period exploring the omnipresent but often redundant nature of technology. Using real-time manipulation software - 'Isadora' for digital video to merge audiovisual material with live performance. Everyday events were recorded and examined, every mannerism observed, repeated and dissected to the point of obsession.

Duggal creates work around the mechanics of identity, sampling imagery from contemporary culture to engineer video works that engage the viewer through their complex manipulation of everyday situations.

“Picnolepsy” is a term coined by writer Paul Virilio to illustrate how contemporary humans ‘dumb down’ their experiences of living in a world with excess information as a way of preserving our fragile egos. As if your experience must pixilate into smaller, more manageable fragments - a coping strategy for living in our society of speed. Similarly, Nisha tries to make sense of the jumbled landscape, making the complicated simple.

Whilst at D6, Duggal developed and shot 'Colours' an exploration of individuality and preference. Through filmed interviews Duggal presented a ‘relational portrait’ of her collaborators. Each person’s responses were carefully orchestrated and manipulated into a schema that dwells on what makes each of us different, our likes and dislikes and the evolution of our cultural standards.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Nisha Duggal works in response to structures of power and control. She processes everyday experience to explore expressions of freedom and creativity lived within it. Through relational portraits that highlight an insecurity at the very concept of individuality, her practice posits constructive frameworks for living within an increasingly overloaded world.

Nisha's films and drawings have exhibited internationally including installations at Watermans (London), Arnolfini (Bristol), Ginza Art Lab (Tokyo), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead) and Oriel Mostyn (Llandudno) and screenings at European Media Art Festival (Osnabrueck), Rekalde (Bilbao), Cornerhouse (Manchester) and Iniva (London). She has been awarded commissions by Site Gallery (Sheffield) and Contemporary Art Forum (Kitchener, Ontario). Nisha studied at Derby and The Slade and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Moving Image Awards in 2008. She completed the Florence Trust residency in 2010 and has work in the Saatchi Collection. She lives and works in London.